With this he propelled me towards the door, and out into the fresh, wintry Piccadilly night. As soon as we were outside he leaned heavily against the wall, the back of one hand pressed to his forehead while the other fanned his drawn and pallid face.
‘That family,’ he moaned. ‘I can’t be in their presence for more than a few minutes without feeling physically sickened. Nauseous.’
‘There were only two of them,’ I pointed out.
‘It’s a good thing: otherwise I might have been recognized. Some of the Winshaws have got memories which go back a long way. It’s because they’ve got such dreadful secrets to hide.’
Only Roddy and Hilary had attended the private view, and neither of them – despite having met me on a number of occasions – had stooped to acknowledge my presence. At any other time I might have made a point of forcing myself on their attention, but tonight I was too busy taking the measure of my new acquaintance. He was a small man, his shoulders stooped and his body tightened in the grip of his ninety-odd years; but the gusto with which he wielded his gold-topped cane, and his spectacular head of white, sculpted hair managed to give the lie to his age. It was also impossible not to notice, at the very first, the overwhelming scent of jasmine in which (as he later explained) he was wont to douse himself before stepping out of doors, so that at least one of the riddles which had been haunting me these last few weeks was now finally laid to rest.
‘Now, Mr Owen –’ he began.
‘Michael, please.’
‘Michael. We must proceed with our business. I can feel myself recovering. The strength seeps back into my feeble bones. I can almost walk. Where’s it to be?’
‘I really don’t mind.’
‘There are a number of pubs round here, of course, where gentlemen of my own persuasion like to congregate. But perhaps this isn’t the right time. We don’t want to be distracted, after all. Privacy is of the utmost importance. I have a car parked a few streets away, provided the boys in blue haven’t removed it by force. I’m no great admirer of the police, we’ve been at loggerheads for many years; it’s one of the things you’ll soon find out about me. My flat is in Islington. Twenty minutes’ drive, or thereabouts. How does that suit you?’
‘Sounds fine.’
‘I hope you’ve brought the necessary documentation,’ he said, as we began walking along Cork Street.
He was referring to the yellowed scrap of paper, the note scribbled nearly fifty years ago by Lawrence Winshaw which his sister Tabitha, in her simplicity, had believed to provide certain proof of his guilt, but I must say that his insistence on this point struck me as rather brazen. Here was a man who had recently stolen my manuscript from the publisher’s office, followed me home twice and almost scared Fiona to death. To be sure, his letter had been apologetic enough, but still it didn’t seem to me that he was in much of a position to dictate terms.
‘I’ve brought it,’ I said. ‘I haven’t decided yet whether I’m going to show it to you.’
‘Come, come, Michael,’ said Findlay, patting me reprovingly on the leg with his cane. ‘We’re in this together. We both have the same objective – to arrive at the truth: and we’ll get there quicker if we cooperate. So, my methods are a little irregular. They always have been. You can’t change the habits of a lifetime: and a lifetime is almost how long I’ve been working on this case.’
‘Surely there’ve been others in between?’
‘Oh, a little debt-collecting here, a little divorce work there. Nothing worthy the name of detection. My career, you see, has been a little – how shall I put this – sporadic. My professional activities have frequently had to be suspended for reasons of … well, pleasure.’
‘Pleasure?’
‘Her Majesty’s pleasure, to be precise. The jug. The slammer. I’ve spent a goodly part of my life in prison, Michaeclass="underline" in fact, believe it or not, I had a two-month suspended sentence handed down to me only this year. I am, as the saying goes, on a bender.’ He gave a mirthless laugh. ‘An ironic turn of phrase, when you consider that all this persecution, this hounding that I have been subject to all my life, is what I have to pay for the sake of a few happy moments snatched every now and again in the darkness of a public toilet or the waiting room of a suburban railway station. Can you believe this society of ours would be so cruel? To punish a man for the most natural of cravings, for indulging his forlorn, lonely need to find companionship with the occasional passing stranger. It’s not our fault if it can’t always take place behind closed doors; if the arrangements sometimes have to be a little on the ad hoc side. We didn’t choose to be driven into this corner, after all.’ His tone, which had been edging its way towards anger, suddenly quietened. ‘Anyway, this is all by the by. No, this has not been my only case for the last thirty years, to answer your question, but it’s the only one which I haven’t brought to a successful conclusion. Not that I don’t have my suspicions, my own personal theories. But what we are lacking is proof.’
‘I see. And what exactly are these personal theories of yours?’
‘Well, that’s going to take a little while to explain. Let’s wait until we get to the car, at least. Do you work out, Michael? Attend a gym, or anything like that?’
‘No. Why do you ask?’
‘It’s just that you have unusually firm buttocks. For a writer, that is. It was the first thing I noticed about you.’
‘Thank you,’ I said – for want of anything better.
‘If you find that my hand strays in that direction at any point during the evening, feel free to say something about it. I’m an incorrigible groper these days, I’m afraid. The older I get, the less control I seem to have over this wretched libido of mine. You mustn’t hold an old man’s weaknesses against him.’
‘Of course not.’
‘I knew you’d understand. Here we are: it’s the blue Citroen 2CV.’
It took us a while to get settled in the car. Findlay’s ancient joints groaned loudly as he lowered himself into the driver’s seat, and then, while struggling to find a suitable resting place for his cane, he dropped the car keys which I had to retrieve, contorting myself and almost pulling a muscle in my effort to reach down behind the gear lever. Once the engine had started, on the fourth attempt, Findlay tried to get the car moving with the handbrake on and the gears still in neutral. I sat back and resigned myself to a bumpy ride.
‘The news that you were writing this book came as a great surprise to me,’ said Findlay, as we headed for Oxford Street. ‘It delights me to say that I’d hardly given that appalling family any thought for about ten years. May I ask what could possibly have induced such a charming and – if you don’t mind me saying so – handsome young man as yourself to get involved with that shabby crew?’
I told him the story of Tabitha and how I came to be offered her peculiar commission.
‘Curious,’ he said. ‘Very curious. There must be some new scheme behind all this. I wonder what she’s up to. Have you been in communication with her solicitor?’
‘Solicitor?’
‘Think about it, dear boy. A woman confined to an insane asylum is scarcely in a position to go around setting up trust funds all of her own accord. She’d need a responsible agent to act on her behalf – just as she did thirty years ago, when she decided to engage the services of a private detective. I suspect that she continues to deal through the same fellow – if he’s still alive, that is. His name was Proudfoot: a local man, unscrupulous enough to be swayed by the thought of all that money lying around in high-interest accounts.’
‘And he was the one who first approached you: that was how you came to be involved with the Winshaws?’
‘Well, where shall I begin?’ We were waiting at a red traffic light, and Findlay showed every sign of sinking into a deep reverie. Fortunately the angry horn of a car behind us startled him out of it. ‘It all seems such a long time ago, now. I imagine myself almost as a young man. Ridiculous. I was already in my late fifties. Thinking about retirement. Planning long days of sunlit debauchery in Turkey or Morocco or somewhere. Well, look what happened to that idea … London was about as far south as I ever got.